Sutherland, Richard Kerens (1893-1966)

Richard Sutherland was MacArthur's
controversial chief of staff,
serving in that post throughout the war.
Born in Maryland, he was the son of Senator Howard Sutherland.
Though
he had never commanded
troops
in the field at any rank
higher than captain, MacArthur's patronage allowed him to rise to
the
rank of lieutenant general. Mayo quotes a fellow officer who
described
him as a "hard man" who was more feared than liked, but who "would
sometimes break the mask of hardness with a sardonic smile and
curious
flashes of humor."

Sutherland was deeply loyal to MacArthur
and
was a formidable barrier to anyone wishing to take any of the
latter
general's time. This doubtless freed MacArthur from numerous
distractions, but it likely also prevented important information
from
making its way to the top, as Lewis
Brereton
alleged took place on the first day of the war. MacArthur's own
loyalty
to Sutherland began to wane in late 1944, when it surfaced that
Sutherland had had his Australian
mistress commissioned into the Women's
Army Corps so that she could
remain close to him in the combat theater. By 1945, MacArthur was
seriously considering replacing Sutherland with Eichelberger.

Taaffe (2011) credits Sutherland with intelligence and
considerable skill at translating MacArthur's directives into
operational plans, attributing Sutherland's brusqueness and
seeming lack of emotion to the same desire not to be distracted by
sentimentality that characterized such successful commanders as Marshall. However,
Sutherland was a brittle man who lacked the underlying warmth
needed to make this approach fully successful, and the strain of
the war caused him to develop high blood pressure that may have
significantly impaired his judgement.